u/flammable_donut

Our move is perfectly rational in economic terms. But there is another reason for leaving, one that is more difficult to say out loud.

Louise Perry

The Wall Street Journal

July 3, 2026 - 5:00AM

The Last of England is an 1855 painting by Ford Madox Brown that depicts a family leaving Britain for Australia. The white cliffs of Dover disappear behind them, but they don’t look back. The eyes of the mother and father are fixed ahead, their expressions stony. The woman holds the tiny hand of a baby who is tucked beneath her shawl, while her other hand is held by her husband. Voted one of Britain’s greatest paintings in a 2005 poll run by BBC Radio 4, The Last of England expresses a painful relationship with the mother country – a place to run from, and to grieve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_Madox_Brown_-_The_Last_of_England_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Some of my ancestors underwent a journey much like this, leaving Britain for Australia during the gold rush of the 1850s. I made the same journey last week with my husband and our two little boys. Our experience was a whole lot easier than that of the past. The flight is lengthy and unpleasant, but nothing like a weeks-long journey by ship. Still, the expressions on the faces of Madox Brown’s subjects made sense to me. In the months leading up to our departure, a lot of people asked if we were feeling “excited” and the answer I always gave was “no”.

As we said goodbye to the country of my birth, I felt bitter and heartbroken. Not because I don’t want to live in Australia – a beautiful country, and my other home – but because I never planned on leaving Britain. So if we’re not “excited” about our move, then why did we do it? This is an awkward question to answer in casual conversation. A lot of British émigrés complain about fleeing the bad weather, but it isn’t obvious to me that the blasting heat of an Australian summer is necessarily preferable to British drizzle. And while the other standard push-and-pull factors do apply to us, they don’t tell the whole story.

It’s certainly true that healthcare is better in Australia, and salaries are higher, since Australia is now a significantly richer country than Britain, the two countries having diverged following the 2008 financial crisis. Britain used to be the aspirational destination for ambitious young Australians – including my parents – but that is no longer true, and Australia has been merrily brain-draining Britain for some time now. Our move is perfectly rational in economic terms.

But there is another reason for leaving, one that is more difficult to say out loud. I’m not only unhappy with how things are right now in Britain, I’m worried that they’re set to get a whole lot worse. I started thinking seriously about leaving Britain in 2024, spurred by two things: my direct experience of the dire state of NHS maternity services, and my unease about the rise of Muslim sectarianism in politics. This was the year in which the “Gaza Five”, a group of politicians who ran on an Islamopopulist platform, were elected to parliament. These candidates ignore the liberal universalist ideals that other British politicians are committed to, instead making explicit appeals to ethno-religious solidarity.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Muslim-dominated cities of Birmingham, Oldham and Bradford have seen multiple cases of arson attacks on politicians’ cars in the lead-up to elections, as well as tyre slashing and threatening messages scratched into the paintwork. Violence is a feature of elections in Pakistan. Is it so very surprising that we are now seeing the same disorder in Pakistani-majority areas of Britain? Paying close attention to current affairs is part of my job, and it became apparent to me that British politics was changing, and not for the better.

I sought out scholarly opinion on the matter, and came across the work of David Betz, a professor of war studies at King’s College London. A mild-mannered Canadian who specializes in the study of insurgency, Betz has provided expert advice to the British government on combating insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2019, along with fellow academic Michael Rainsborough, he has been warning about a threat closer to home: a fracturing within British society that seems to presage violence.

Betz and I corresponded by email for some months, and at the beginning of 2025 we spoke on my podcast. I was, I believe, the first journalist to interview him. The public response was extraordinary, no doubt because Betz’s analysis was delivered in such a calm, reasoned tone, and because his message tallies with what so many of us laypeople have observed about the direction things have gone in recent years.

He uses established models and ideas within the discipline of war studies to predict that Britain and France are the Western countries most likely to experience the outbreak of a violent civil conflict that would be fought primarily along ethnic lines. Such conflicts would be the product of economic stress, lost political legitimacy, indigestible levels of immigration from culturally distant places, and a sense of “downgrade” among a native population that feels itself to be losing power and status. Britain is, says Betz, “explosively configured”.

In an article co-written last year with MLR Smith of the Centre for Future Defence and National Security in Canberra, the two academics underlined the increasingly mainstream status of these predictions: “The strategic logic underpinning the argument is not esoteric. The warning signs – erosion of trust, delegitimised politics, social disintegration, elite denial – have long been legible … (T)he steady trickle of retired police chiefs, former civil servants and security officials privately voicing concern indicates that the thesis is apprehended even if never formally endorsed.”

It’s possible these predictions are wrong. But nothing that has happened since 2024 has made me feel more confident about Britain’s trajectory. Since then, we have seen more outbreaks of race rioting and increased political instability. And, all the while, experts warn that the government is borrowing and spending way beyond its means, with welfare spending exceeding income tax revenue. This economic pain will be intensified by the loss to emigration of both the wealthy and the youthful which seems to be under way. A poorer Britain is hardly likely to be a more peaceful Britain.

I realise I’m contributing to this potential doom loop by leaving. Anecdotally, a lot of my peers are thinking along the same lines. A message I received from a friend over the weekend: “every cell of my body wants to emigrate.” If Britons with the means to leave start to do so at scale, then a crisis of mass emigration could be at hand. Some in Britain will accuse me of cowardice and treachery, not only for leaving, but also for writing about it. I did think seriously about drawing a veil over my own emigration, and never publicly explaining why we had done it. But people kept asking, and I grew tired of not telling the whole truth.

My defence is that we wouldn’t have left if it weren’t for our children. That’s why the detail in The Last of England that now draws my focus is the one in the centre of the painting: the mother holding her baby’s hand.

I wonder are the benefits retained with decaf coffee.

Right now they don't have a CGT in NZ apparently.

Immigration was the easy road to economic growth. Now we’re paying the price

Resets, reforms and pure politics are about to about to rock Australia’s deeply flawed migration system.

Paul Kelly

For much of the current century Australia has conducted an immigration experiment almost unique among developed nations – but the flaws in our model have guaranteed an electoral backlash with resets, reforms and pure politics about to rock the system.

Consider the big picture. Over 2000 to 2024 Australia’s population, heavily driven by immigration, has grown by 42 per cent, an astonishing figure nearly three times the average growth of OECD industrial nations.

This percentage increase is around twice that of the US and Britain and is ahead of other strong immigration countries such as Canada and New Zealand.

At the same time there has been a revolution in people movement to Australia – it is now dominated by temporary visa holders, not the long-established and prized permanent immigration program running this year at 185,000.

Just 20 years ago Peter Costello as treasurer said: “Australia has never been a guest worker country. We’ve never been a country where we bring you in and ship you out. I don’t think Australians want to see that.” But current policy and practice heads in that direction. The permanent immigration intake most people have known for most of their lives is now sidelined by another model – a temporary model with temporary migrants now embedded across the economy.

The Menzies Research Centre reports there are now about 2.9 million temporary migrants in Australia, about 10 per cent of the current population of 28 million.

The main category is international students, now running at about 515,000 – and that’s a reduced level – with some of our best universities having nearly 50 per cent of their enrolments being overseas students.

The other remarkable feature in our immigration legacy is that 32 per cent of our population, or 8.8 million people, have been born overseas, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Indeed, the 2021 census showed that more than half of Australian residents, 51.5 per cent, were born overseas or had one parent born overseas. This figure would be even higher today.

The comparable foreign-born figure for the US is only 14 per cent, less than half Australia’s, with the US often wrongly mistaken as being a stronger migrant nation than Australia. In truth, there is no comparison. The average foreign-born percentage for OECD nations is also 14 per cent, far below our figure.

Taking the easy road to economic growth

All the above results reveal a sustained transformation in Australia’s society, culture and economy. While migrants are indispensable to our labour market, over the past decade our GDP growth has been driven by population, not productivity, a decisive event. The nation has taken the easy road to economic growth and is paying a devastating price – immigration as a substitute for productivity means per capita income – that is, wages and living standards – has languished, leading to an impatient, disillusioned and angry public mood.

Australia’s immigration story runs far in advance of most other nations and drives social change at a rapid rate. Many people celebrate such diversity; many others believe that Australia’s character and values are being lost. Both feelings demand respect.

Immigration is in overreach. It faces multiple problems, the result of weak management and lack of vision. Recent numbers are too high, the skills program demands a reset, growth in temporary migration is unsustainable and devoid of policy control, while there is rising concern about the values set of a minority of the intake.

This situation has created an inexcusable gift to Pauline Hanson, courtesy of the Albanese government. Labor deserves much of the blame and should be held to account. Hanson has captured the wave of concern about immigration with polls over the past six months (Newspoll, Resolve Monitor, the Lowy Institute and the Institute of Public Affairs) all showing majority support for a lower intake and sentiment in the plus-50 per cent to 65 per cent zone to cut numbers.

Immigration turning point

Many Western nations now face a turning point in their immigration policies. While the foundations of Australia’s program are stronger than those of most nations, a showdown is coming. The real issue is whether changes will be modest or radical or sensible. The worst mistake the pro-immigration progressive movement can make is to pretend nothing is wrong and that such criticisms are merely racism, a denial sure to be counterproductive.

The coming collision is driven by three simultaneous and inflammatory factors. The biggest is the housing crisis with many young people priced out of the market, feeding intergenerational frictions. Labor is now promoting tax changes in next week’s budget, while Angus Taylor tells Inquirer that immigration will be a “key feature” in his reply to the budget.

“You cannot bring people to this country if you don’t have the houses for them. It’s that simple,” the Opposition Leader says.

“Migration levels must be capped by the availability of housing. That’s common sense but it’s not what we have seen. Labor has done the opposite with an unpreceded escalation in immigration numbers, yet housing supply has gone backwards.”

Taylor says the ratio of migrants to housing is running double over the previous figure. He says: “The situation is unsustainable and it’s no wonder young Australians can’t get into a home. For the year we are going into, they are running immigration numbers 80,000 above the targets and housing 70,000 a year below the targets. And Labor’s answer is to put more taxes on it. Seriously, who thought that up?”

He will attack Labor’s intergenerational tax changes by saying the real problem is immigration. Taylor’s pledge to cap migration flows by housing availability points to a decisive shift in immigration policy and politics. It follows a similar move by Canada that cut migration numbers and foreign students in a desperate bid to reduce housing costs – the result has been a shrinking population with benefits for the housing market and affordability but with related evidence that high migration was not the sole cause of the problem.

The second factor in Australia’s political debate has been the immediate leap in the net overseas migration numbers with the border opening after the Covid freeze. The NOM hit 538,340 in 2022-23 and 429,000 the following year. These numbers received massive and damaging political prominence, but they measure all arrivals and departures and should not be confused with the formal policy. The government is desperate, given the political optics, to cut them but the task has proven difficult, Jim Chalmers has conceded the current planned reduction to 225,000 won’t be reached.

Social cohesion is fraying

The third element has been the erosion of social cohesion with an entrenched antisemitism that repudiates our multicultural ethic and that culminated in the Bondi massacre of 15 people and the creation of the royal commission.

The Middle East conflict has resounded in this country with pro-Palestinian protests, open support for pro-Hamas terrorism, attacks on Jewish people and almost free licence given to radical Islamists and preachers endorsing violence against Jews – events that have led to a profound rethink within conservative politics in this country.

In his recent Australian Values Migration Plan, Taylor, after declaring his support for immigration, said people with the “wrong motivations” who had “subversive intent” were being allowed entry. The upshot is that Australians “can see the country they love changing for the worse”.

Taylor says the nation cannot discriminate on nationality, race, gender or faith but must now discriminate “based on values”. He says migrants from liberal democracies have a greater likelihood of subscribing to our values – a claim that has provoked criticism and poses implementation difficulties.

In truth, reform of both numbers and of standards is a diabolically challenging mix. The apparent success of Hanson’s populist anti-immigration campaign complicates the task, given that Hanson polarises opinion. Taylor needs to win back voters from One Nation yet also differentiate the Liberals from One Nation. While One Nation is seen in the polls as the party best able to manage immigration, its real position is to throttle immigration in a way guaranteed to damage the country.

The multiple defects in the current immigration agenda have provoked multiple solutions – even from established champions of the program. Commentator and former senior immigration official Abul Rizvi said last month: “Three million temporary entrants are incompatible with the size of the current permanent intake.”

Immigration specialist and Australian National University emeritus professor of demography Peter McDonald has recently produced, along with ANU Migration Hub director Alan Gamlen, a blueprint for major change, warning that the growth in the temporary intake must be curbed and stabilised.

Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger claims the problems with housing in Australia are “too much regulation” and “mass immigration”. Mr Kroger told Sky News host Rita Panahi that housing is “regulated to death”. “Too much regulation on housing and too much mass immigration; they’re the problems with housing today.”

McDonald tells Inquirer: “We think the temporary population needs to be managed and stabilised. It’s about 1.7 million and there’s a tendency to think it’s going to go away. But this population is embedded in the economy. We estimate there’s roughly half a million temporary migrants working in skilled jobs. Temporary migrants are a high proportion of the labour force in aged care. We need to recognise we have an ongoing temporary population, not ignore it, which is the current kind of policy.

“We sleepwalked into this situation. Over the last 20 years both Labor and Coalition governments have made various changes leading to the temporary population continuing to grow. This country has a history of saying migration should be permanent only, so if we are going in this direction then we need to plan for our temporary population.”

In a recent analysis, Nico Louw from the Menzies Research Centre says the key to reducing immigration numbers lies in the temporary migrant category. The permanent program at 185,000, split between the skilled and family streams, is “only a small part” of the immigration story.

Temporary migration comprises students, working holiday makers and visitors. But international students dominate, with many staying for years and a significant number becoming citizens. Getting the temporary numbers down needs action on both sides of the equation – limiting arrivals and increasing departures.

Louw argues public sentiment is changing decisively on immigration: “Australians have historically been more willing to accept higher levels of legal migration when they believe the government has control of the borders” – this is the legacy of the border controls of the Howard and Abbott governments – “but this relationship has broken down, as legal migration surged at the same time as a rising cost of living, high housing costs and a sense of fragmenting social cohesion.”

In January this year official figures show there were 515,717 international students in Australia, a fall on the previous year, with China comprising 23 per cent and India 17 per cent. Before the 2025 election both Labor and the Coalition focused on lower student numbers in their efforts to return immigration overall to its pre-pandemic levels.

Australia’s university sector is moving towards a likely crisis over the reduction in international students, a cohort vital in delivering revenue for the higher education sector. The university sector has been stunningly incompetent in managing its interests and its image with the public and the political class in recent years. Having enjoyed, along with the mining industry, a generation of national income success wired into the Chinese market, the message now being sent is one of retreat.

The government is driven by the politics and the reality that, if reductions in numbers are essential, then the student intake is the obvious target. Whether Labor has the nous to protect the export industry, reduce the numbers and manage the consequences is doubtful.

The wider migrant story is the dominance of India and China. Recent official figures reveal the explosion of migrants from India with our Indian-born numbers now numbering 971,000, more than doubling over the past decade. India has now replaced England as the largest source nation of foreign-born residents. Chinese-born migrant numbers are 731,000, another substantial increase over the decade.

Children aboard the post WWII Sitmar liner, Fairsea, which made several journeys to Australia under the International Refugee Organisation from 1949 to 1951, carrying displaced persons affected by the war. Picture: National Archives of Australia

Children aboard the post WWII Sitmar liner, Fairsea, which made several journeys to Australia under the International Refugee Organisation from 1949 to 1951, carrying displaced persons affected by the war. Picture: National Archives of Australia

Australia, courtesy of immigration, has rapidly turned into one of the world’s most culturally and linguistically diverse Western nations. The 2021 census showed that one in four people (23 per cent) spoke a language other than English at home, the most common being Mandarin and Arabic. A total of 872,000 people self-reported speaking English “not well” or “not at all”.

Too much of the current debate ignores the Australian fertility crisis and the indispensable role of immigration in our tight labour market filled with job vacancies. Our current fertility rate has fallen to 1.42 compared with the 2.1 replacement level – this means the Australian people are deciding they have no economic option but a strong, ongoing immigration program.

But that program demands reform in our economic interests.

Former Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson, who reviewed the program in 2023, found that almost half of permanent migrants work below their skill level, despite one in three occupations facing worker shortages. The skills mismatch undermines both our economy and the immigration program. It needs to be urgently addressed.

Analysing the economics of the program, University of NSW Scientia professor Richard Holden tells Inquirer: “Australia has historically focused too much on GDP and too little on GDP per capita. It’s the latter which is the right measure of living standards. Immigration mechanically boosts GDP, but only boosts GDP per capita if immigrants are more highly skilled than average, or fill gaps in the labour market that aren’t being met domestically.

“The other element of confusion on immigration concerns temporary immigration. This can also be economically and socially valuable, but we must focus on steady-state levels, not the large outflows or inflows that occurred around the time of the pandemic. The Department of Home Affairs needs to make more accurate forecasts and a key element of this is developing a better picture of temporary migrant outflows. The quality of our national discussion about migration would be vastly improved and more constructive if we had accurate numbers.”

Yet there is a bigger issue because immigration is not just a policy. By definition immigration changes a nation because it changes numbers, people and culture. This is a decisive political event. The question then becomes: is it possible to substantially reform an immigration program that has become an integral component in our national identity?

This is the conundrum that Australia is about to face.

In a September 2025 paper authors Gamlen and Andrew Jaspan said that despite a global populist disruption around immigration, Australia was different. Reaching a remarkable conclusion, they wrote: “Migration in Australia is thus not just policy but part of the nation’s identity and state machinery: it is pre-political. This stability has shielded it from the immigration-driven turmoil seen in Britain with Brexit and in the US with Trump. Though Australia has more foreign-born residents than either, its debates are calmer, thanks to both national identity and long-term state capacity.”

These are revealing judgments pointing both to the confidence and complacency of the immigration establishment. It is true that immigration has borne exaggerated blame for many of our current ills from housing costs to political polarisation – yet it is equally true that it must bear some of the blame, that the current program is losing public support and that it is undermined by a range of policy mistakes.

Is genuine reform of immigration possible? The ruthless assessment of the Coalition’s prospects by RedBridge Group director Kos Samaras suggests it might be a bridge too far and that Australia is far different from the nation that initially voted for John Howard in 1996.

Samaras says Australia “has fundamentally changed who it is”. In the inner metropolitan seats the percentage of people who are foreign born or had a parent foreign born is now nearly 66 per cent.

“These voters are not looking for a cultural restoration project,” he says. Samaras seizes on the turning point that India is now replacing England as Australia’s largest overseas-born diaspora and warns that Taylor, in pitching to so-called “Australian values”, is not talking to the people he needs to win.

It is a fair warning. But there is no reason Indian and Chinese migrants should automatically shun the Liberals, nor is there any reason to think they would automatically oppose sensible immigration reform. But that is a bigger question that will need to be addressed in the Australian democracy.

Shaping up as ‘one of the biggest disasters’ in Australian infrastructure history, Malcolm Turnbull’s $2bn vision now costs 20 times more and here’s why.

Tansy Harcourt

6 min read

April 26, 2026 - 7:00PM

The true cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0 has spiralled to $42bn and should be the subject of a Royal Commission into “one of the biggest disasters” in Australian infrastructure, economist Bruce Mountain and energy executive Ted Woodley said.

By the time all associated infrastructure and financing costs were priced in, Dr Mountain said the bill was 20-times higher than former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull first promised. Snowy Hydro 2.0 insiders were so concerned about the cost inflation, they doubted there will be any benefit realised from cheaper energy bills.

Others described how its secrecy was perpetuated by Freedom of Information requests denied under the cover of commercial confidence.

Unlike the National Disability Insurance Scheme, where cost overruns have dominated political debate and budget headlines, the true price of the energy transition has been deliberately hidden from public scrutiny through off-budget accounting and separation of interconnected costs.

“The NDIS, at least you know the cost of it, because that’s public in all the Budget papers. Whereas a lot of this is hidden, you just wouldn’t know,” said former Labor politician Jennie George, former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Major contractors on Australia’s flagship renewable energy project are simultaneously reaping profits at taxpayers’ expense under arrangements that guarantee payment irrespective of performance, while a series of prime ministers have maintained a wall of secrecy around the project.

The vision for Snowy Hydro 2.0 should replicate the work of a colossal battery.

It will use surplus solar and wind during bright or blowing days to pump water to an elevated reservoir that is released to create electricity.

The exact boring technology is untested. The project is five years behind Mr Turnbull’s original timeline, and 900 per cent more expensive for the main plant alone excluding the necessary transmission lines.

The former Coalition government kept supporting Snowy Hydro 2.0 – it was its idea after all – and now the Albanese Labor government is reaping the reward of having a unionised workforce deliver it.

“Successive governments have failed to respond to a project that was so obviously doomed right from the start,” said Dr Mountain, who is the Director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University.

Ms George, who retains strong connections to the Labor movement despite her criticism of current government policy, argued the lack of transparency represented a fundamental breach of ALP commitment to accountability.

“For a government committed to accountability and transparency, there’s no defence for keeping from the public – particularly from the taxpayer who underwrites a lot of these projects – just what it’s actually costing us,” said Ms George. “No one knows.”

The comparison to NDIS is stark: The government had justified winding back disability support due to cost overruns and exploitation by “unscrupulous people,” yet it refused to reveal the full cost behind the green transition, through which corporate interests have secured government-backed returns.

“Vested interests wouldn’t be pursuing projects unless they had the certainty of being underwritten by government,” Ms George said.

Royal Commission into Snowy 2.0

Dr Mountain supported a Royal Commission into the secrecy and profligacy. “What’s always been needed here is properly independent investigation,” he said. “I think there is a case for a Royal Commission into this.”

On Dr Mountain and Mr Woodley’s estimates, Snowy and its critical transmission infrastructure cost have ballooned 2000 per cent to $42bn. That estimate includes $20bn in direct construction costs, $8bn in interest charges over the 15-year build time, and $12bn as Snowy’s attributable share of transmission infrastructure, including Humelink and VNI West, originally designated as Snowy Link South and Snowy Link North.

There are existing power lines that service the original scheme from its remote location but these are “fully loaded” and already struggle to cope on hot days.

Many of these costs are impossible to track. For instance, the government is leaning on Clean Energy Finance Corp to effectively fund $1b of a planned bailout of the Tomago smelter, by asking it to provide that financing to Snowy Hydro which in turn guarantees a below-commercial rate of power to the smelter.

Not only have costs ballooned, Ms George foresaw household power bills would not decline as a result. A recent contract with NSW Transport suggested energy will be priced at $200 per megawatt hour “which is quite astronomical,” Ms George said, highlighting how the lack of planning is “pretty evident in every major project that you look at.”

Energy Minister Chris Bowen promised “independent review and absolute transparency on Snowy” when Labor returned to power, yet has failed to deliver this, according to Dr Mountain.

“All that he released publicly to justify doubling Snowy 2.0’s budget was a PR document with no substance,” he said.

Anthony Albanese has taken a drastically different tack on handling the fuel crisis and, most importantly, the Prime Minister has dragged Chris Bowen along with him. As the reality of fuel shortages and public concern gripped the government there has been a decided pivot to reassuring the public, providing what daily updates can be delivered, conceding concern about the future of fuel supplies, dropping the cheap political one-liners and offering reassuring information instead of invective.

Who is making money from Snowy?

Italian construction giant Webuild is in charge of the project and booked €4bn of revenue from Australia last year alone (a figure that included other projects). Australia is now a close-second in terms of revenue for Webuild behind Italy, and is its biggest pipeline going forward.

Webuild operates under a controversial cost-plus margin contract. Based on industry standards, that probably means it gets $1.20 for every $1 it spends, creating a perverse incentive to go big.

“That’s a wonderful business to have, isn’t it?” said a former insider.

The federal government instructed Snowy Hydro’s board to renegotiate Webuild’s original performance-based contract. Senior executives travelled to Milan for discussions that resulted in a departure from incentive-based terms.

“The contract was based on getting paid on performance. They had to meet milestones – and they weren’t meeting them,” the former insider said.

Under the original agreement, Webuild faced claims of approximately $2bn for delays and underperformance. When co-builder Clough collapsed, those claims ballooned to $6bn, with the additional costs absorbed by taxpayers through the cost-plus arrangement.

The project now employs 50 per cent or roughly 3000 more workers than originally budgeted, averaging $250,000 annually according to Dr Mountain, with powerful unions including the CFMEU and ETU participating.

Former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad says the delays facing the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project are “not surprising”. “They’re a fair way behind still, right from day one it was always going to be complex,” Mr Broad told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “You’re always going to have these delays and problems, and it doesn’t surprise me one little bit they’re having it.”

Webuild has faced severe criticism for basic competency failures that plagued the project from the outset. The Italian company was late to start work because of an early decision to source worker accommodation from Italy, rather than using Australian suppliers experienced in mining camps. Tunnel boring machines took three times longer than expected to assemble, while safety issues created constant concerns.

“From day one, they were a complete bloody disaster,” the former insider said.

Transmission providers Transgrid and AusNet are also similarly positioned to maximise profits through the expansion of their regulated asset bases.

Transgrid (owned by a consortium of investors including the Future Fund and Abu Dhabi’s equivalent) is building the transmission lines in NSW, and Brookfield-controlled AusNet is building them in Victoria.

The Australian Energy Regulator approves expenditure outlays and has “in several cases provided money for early works, and then they later revise the costings,” according to Ms George, who described this as “a constant problem”.

The AER’s decision on Transgrid’s latest $1.1bn increase to capital expenditure – $173m to be shared by households – is due this week.

Snowy ‘Too Big to Fail’

Dr Mountain argued the project represents a fundamental policy failure that successive governments refuse to acknowledge. “Snowy 2.0 is, and always was, a dreadful idea,” he said, citing its price, environmental damage and a storage system that cannot be quickly recharged like batteries.

It takes months to pump water through a cascade system before the upper reservoir can be refilled, making it unsuitable for the flexible backup role it was designed to fill.

Dr Mountain argued that extremely rare periods requiring extended backup power would be more efficiently served by gas or diesel generation, with negligible greenhouse gas impact due to infrequent usage.

When finished, Snowy Hydro should provide 350GWh of long-duration energy storage, impressive enough to power 3 million homes for a week. Whether it is worth $42bn is another thing entirely.

Former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad praises the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project, referring to it as “phenomenal”. “This is a really good project. The engineering going into this project is phenomenal,” Mr Broad told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “At some point, someone will step back from this and say what has been achieved on this site in 10 or 15 years’ time will set new engineering standards.”

Ms George acknowledged the project is “probably too big to fail, but it exposes all the weaknesses, starting with the lack of adequate planning”.

The Australian National Audit Office is due to table a report on Snowy Hydro 2.0 in May but it is confined to considering whether the 2023 contract reset is informed by “sound planning and advice,” and if Snowy Hydro Ltd is “effectively managing contract performance to achieve value for money and to deliver the outcomes required of the project”.